B36604:349
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity,…
Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many professors bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.Preparation for sufferings. Or The best work in the worst times Wherein the necessity, excellency, and means of our readiness for sufferings are evinced and prescribed; our call to suffering cleared, and the great unreadiness of many profesours bewailed. By John Flavel minister of Christ in Devon.
London: printed for Robert Boulter, 1681
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. Consi. 2 It is the great design of God in the Gospel, to exalt his Son, and to have all glory attributed and ascribed to him, That in all things he might have the preeminence, Col. 1.13. That Christ might be all in all, Col. 3.11. Hence, no Saint must have a self-sufficiency, or be trusted with a stock as Adam was, but Christ being filled with all the fullness of God, ⟨p. 117⟩and made the [Greek or Hebrew], or first Receptacle of all Grace: For it pleased the Father, that in him all fullness should dwell; all the Saints are therefore to go to him for supplies, and of his fullness to receive, John 1.16. This fullness being a Ministerial fullness, like that of the Sun, or of a Fountain, intended to supply all our wants. And hence is it that Faith, a self-emptying and denying Grace, is appointed to be the Instrument of fetching our supplies from Christ. All must be derived from him, that all the praise and glory may be ascribed to him, Phil. 4.14. And this is a most wise and congruous Ordination of God; for hereby not only are his People the better secured, but by this also the reproach that lay upon Christ is rolled away: He was reproached on earth, as barren, empty, weak Can any good come out of Nazareth? He was looked upon as a Root springing out of a dry ground; but by this shall his Reproach be wiped away: So that unless you will go about to cross the great design of God, in the exaltation of his Christ, you must go out of your selves, and humbly, and constantly rely upon supplies from Christ, and his grace to help in the times of need.
2. Consi. 2 It is the great design of God in the Gospel, to exalt his Son, and to have all glory attributed and ascribed to him, That in all things he might have the preheminence, Col. 1.13. That Christ might be all in all, Col. 3.11. Hence, no Saint must have a self-sufficiency, or be trusted with a stock as Adam was, but Christ being filled with all the fulness of God,